A Contrast Study Of Chinese-Korean Animal Proverbs

As the carrier of culture, language records the surviving history and mirrors the culturalspirit of a nation. Therefore language becomes the window that reflects the culture of a nationand every nation has its favorite proverbs which have been passed down generation togeneration as a special form of language. Proverbs as the fruits of the wisdom of the mass,reflect people’s working and living experience. Therefore proverbs usually have fixedstructures and express rich and profound meanings in simple language.Long time ago animals and human beings began to get along with each other andestablished a cloes relationship. In this process, people become to know the behaviors ofanimals and endow animals with complicated symbolic meanings. From the perspective ofcultural linguistics, this thesis analyzes the image features and symbolic meanings of the twohighly-frequently appeared animals, discusses similarities and differences between Chineseand Korean animal proverbs, and explores the reasons from the theory about language andculture which originates from cultural linguistics.The orgnization of this thesis is as follows. Firstly, the definitions of Chinese and Koreanproverbs are introduced and the relationship of language, culture and proverbs are discussed.Secondly, the most frequently appeared animals namely dogs and horses are chosen as theresearch objects with the purpose of comparing their positive、negative and other imagefeatures and symbolic meanings. Finally, the similarities and differences of the animalproverbs are illustrated and the culture backgrounds that contribute to the formations ofanimal proverbs are analyzed.It is hoped that this thesis will be helpful to Korean learners in china in understanding bothChinese and Korean culture.